With the vast amount of audio and/or video information available, for example, from the Internet, reliable accessibility to pertinent information has become essential. The amount of information stored within databases can easily overwhelm a user.
Conventional database search techniques utilize keyword searching. The user searches the database with keyword(s), in which a search engine returns relevant information or bits. For example, the hit(s) returned can be sorted according to the frequency of the keyword(s) within the information in the database.
There are difficult and time-consuming steps involved in creating a database utilizing a keyword search. Typically, the information for the database is collected. From this collection of information, a manual-sort is performed. The manual-sort consists of a generalization of the information, which involves a large amount of reading or familiarization of the material (e.g., indexing and/or keyword extraction). This manual-sort categorizes the information into appropriate topic(s) or categories along with the keyword(s) associated with each specific item within the database. Thereafter, the information within the database is searchable according to the keyword(s) associated with the appropriate topic(s) or categories.
Although the keyword search has proven to be an efficient search for databases of textual information, it is inconvenient for multimedia databases. For example, multimedia databases having video and/or audio clips are not readily searchable based on keyword(s) (e.g., because of the lack of or non-existence of written words within the material).